Tuesday..The Whole Enchilada!?

This morning started like most but the day was nothing like most!! 9:30 am we hop aboard the Pioson Spider shuttle van with a group of 7 other bikers. We are heading for the Burro Pass trail in the La Sal mountains. This is approx. 1 hour ride from Down town Moab. This is the start of the trail ride called "The Whole Enchilada" http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/enchilada.htm
This ride goes something like this: You start by getting dropped off on Geyser pass road (10,400 ft above sea level!! having trouble breathing just reading about it?!) next you ride approx. 1/2 mile to the start of the ascent!! You try to ride up approx. another 1/2 mile to the official start of the Burro pass trail. We could only make it a couple hundred feet at a time and we had to stop because our hearts were trying to jump out of our chests!! Once we reached the official start we continue our torturous climb 1.2 miles up to 11,600 ft. It is now 40 degrees and a mixture of snow and rain is falling!! We are tired and cold!! Power bar time. We now start our descent back to town. We are still approx. 26-36 miles from moab depending on the route you take back. I forgot to mention that I forgot my gloves!! This is an important part of the story! On the way down the first few miles of the Burro trail my frozen hand slips of my wet grip and over the front of the bike I go!! In the crash I broke the rear brake lever and manage to smash my face on a rock even though I had a full face helmet on!! This left me with a nice cut between my eyes.......nice!! I also dug a dime side chunk of skin out of my left palm. What a way to start a long ride. Lucky for me Dez had supplies and we fixed up my hand and headed on down to Warner Lake. The Trail and scenery is like no other. This trail ride was worth the trip all by itself!!! Next we buzzed through the Hazard county trail were we met some very nice people with the forestry service. They gave us some sandwichs and Gatoraid. The also helped me Mcgiver my rear brake. Thanks to these guys and gals we were now fueled up and ready to ride the rest of the trail. On the way down the Kokopelli trail we meet up with some locals who took us on two other trails which are not part of the normal ride. These 2 eventually meet up with LPS(lower procupine singletrack) trail and then to Porcupine rim trail. The views on these triails are unreal. At various points of the trail you are literally 2 feet from the rim of the canyon! Just dont look over the edge! I mean Holy SH*T!!! Its amazing!! By this time (5:30pm) we are running out of day light.(2.5 hours until dark) Now on Porcupine rim trail we headed 3 miles back towards sand flats rd. This part of the trail we were actually going backwards. It was super rocky but really fast and fun. Sand flats road takes you approx. 9 miles back to town. We arrive in town at 7:34 pm. First stop in town was the Slickrock Cafe http://www.slickrockcafe.com/ for food and beverage! We shared our story with Hanna the bar tender and had a great meal. Be sure to check them out it you are in town. Finally back in Moab we retrieved our truck from pioson spider bike shop and headed for bed. I final word............ EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!